Jun11thBarcelona Tango

We make use of being in a city where one can dance Tango every night of the week. It is lovely to meet up again with Osvaldo and Graciela, who are often guests at Fernando’s Tango Feast in Devon, though Frank had met them some years earlier at a Tango festival in Barcelona whilst making a TV programme ‘Dancing with Colin’ (Jackson). They have since moved to a new venue, beautifully decorated, and the atmosphere of their Milonga ‘La Yumba’ is very friendly.

On Sunday afternoon, we take the metro to go and dance Tango in the open air in one of the parks in Barcelona, Parc Ciutadella. We meet up with Chechu who lives right by the side of the park and spend an afternoon chatting and catching up. She hasn’t been that involved in Tango for the past few years, giving herself time instead to follow The Artist’s Way and training in NLP, as well as devising her own programme of teaching how to release creative energy, called ‘EncaminArte’.

We also go to dance with a younger crowd in El Susurro, as part of the Tango Marathon which takes place one weekend, but I find this group not so open, and there is a more predatory feeling around who is dancing with who – one of the aspects that I don’t like in Tango.

One night, I meet up with Jim at Milonga Queer, a relatively new Milonga. Unfortunately that evening, there is one couple who need to show off their high boleos to the crowd, and since it’s quite a small dance floor, they make dancing for everyone else rather difficult, so I leave after a couple of hours.

Josep and Teresa have moved to a different venue since I last danced in Barcelona, but the atmosphere in their Milonga is unchanged – very warm and friendly, traditional, close embrace Tango, an older crowd. I have always enjoyed coming to their Milonga, it is unpretentious and from the heart, and I enjoy Josep’s choice of music.

There is a great map of Tango in Barcelona, ‘Ruta del Tango’ which locates almost all of these Milongas plus many more that we didn’t have time to go to.

I’d say Barcelona is a good place to go and immerse oneself in dancing. The atmosphere is very friendly, although on the whole I missed dancing of a more subtle and musical nature. But this has been the case throughout our journey through Spain and Portugal, not just in Barcelona.